Is Wuthering Waves playable on Steam Deck?

With the imminent launch of Wuthering Waves for both PC and mobile platforms, readers may be curious about whether the game runs on Valve’s incredibly popular handheld gaming PC. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to run Wuthering Waves on a Steam Deck or any Linux system for that matter, regardless of distribution, hardware, or any other factor.

Read on to learn more about the situation and any possible workarounds.

---

Wuthering Waves does not run on the Steam Deck

Wuthering Waves is not playable on SteamOS (Image via Kuro Games)

Kuro Game’s newest open-world action RPG does not natively run on the Steam Deck. The game does not possess a native Linux port and, as such, is not playable on SteamOS.

The title also ships with a custom kernel-level anticheat solution that is only supported on Windows machines as of now. This prevents the game from running via either Lutris or Steam’s built-in Proton compatibility layer.

While the installer finishes downloading game files, the title itself will throw an unexpected runtime environment error when attempting to launch it.

Until Kuro Games officially adds in support, the game is unlikely to ever run on the Steam Deck.

---

Alternative methods to get Wuthering Waves running on the Steam Deck

There exist two alternative solutions to get the game running on a Deck (Image via Valve)

While it is not possible to get Wuthering Waves to natively run on the Steam Deck, there are certain workarounds you can try out:

---

Dual booting Windows

Perhaps the safest way to deal with this issue is by dual booting Windows. While admittedly cumbersome and (sometimes) a general pain, this remains the best way to not face a potential ban due to circumvention of the anti-cheat implementation.

Check out this guide for dual booting Windows and SteamOS.

---

Using Waydroid

An alternative method to get the game working on SteamOS is with the use of Waydroid, an Android container solution for Linux systems.

To get Waydroid set up on your Steam Deck, you can refer to the instructions within the SteamOS-Waydroid-Installer Github page. After setting it up (and additional components, such as the libndk translation layer), you will have to log in to Google Play and download the game.

Simply wait until the download finishes and launch the game within Waydroid to gain full access, including controller and touch support. Keep in mind that this method will run the Android version of the title and not the PC port.

These methods are far from perfect, however, and require a fair bit of setup to get working. Alternative Windows-based handhelds, such as the ROG Ally and Legion Go, are perhaps better options for now.